


Shattered

by ThatwasJustaDream



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Canon, Angst, Community: 1_million_words, Dark, M/M, Pre-Slash, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-19
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2017-12-29 20:16:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 9,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1009620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatwasJustaDream/pseuds/ThatwasJustaDream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve knows better - these horrors can't be real. And yet they are, for as long as he lives them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tumult

**Author's Note:**

> I added the 'alternate canon' tag for those who might not have noted that this version of them has only been working together for a few months. In this world, a ton of what we know - they don't know. This is written to Words of the Day for October on the 1_million_Words comm.

It’s chaos; the kind he knows may kill him any second.

Steve looks behind him, never breaking stride. He’s running so hard his lungs and legs can barely take it, his arms pumping like pistons. He’s not alone. Ten, fifteen others are with him and every one of them is matching his pace. They’re all men – dressed in black pants, white shirts, colorful scarves around some of their necks as they huff and groan out loud, scrambling for their lives.

Several of them also dare a glimpse back the way he did… to look at the bulls.

The bulls are massive; all hoof and muscle and horns pointed toward the ground, then at them. The horns are a dull yellow and a mottled white and their mouths and noses are wet. They’re snorting with blood lust and … why the _hell_ did he ever agree to put himself in danger of being skewered like a piece of meat?

For the greater good, that’s why.

They’re still running, all of them, but now they’re in a desert. 

The bulls are gone. The men are all in olive drab.

If they can make it to the helicopter, the tank, the transport vehicles… Steve cranks it up a notch, and now he can’t even feel his feet below him.

It’s in sight – shelter. Only feet away -- safety.

Then the whole world lights up in orange and red and he’s off of his feet, flying, landing on his back. 

Broken. 

He looks left and sees his arm lying in a pool of blood. His own. He closes his eyes.

“Oh… _fuck_. No.”

“Steven – where are you?”

The voice in his ear is sharp, booming, authoritative.

“What?” He tastes a bitter tang in the back of his throat as he says it. More blood.

“Tell me where you are. Right now. Don’t think, just say it.”

“I can’t… die. I _didn’t_ …. die. I … completed every tour and I went home to Oahu and I run the 5-0, I …did…all that so…. this _can’t_ be happening.”

“Smart boy,” a different voice this time. Male, but less authoritative. Equally demanding, though, and also … echoing softly. Like it’s coming from a great distance. “Be smart _now_ and say it for us. Where. Are. You?”

“I… have… _no_ idea. But I think… I think I’m…..” 

He opens his eyes and sees only black. He wants to say ‘help me,’ wants to say ‘I’m dying, please… help me’ but it’s too much effort to draw in the air.

There’s a sharp sound, like hellacious feedback at a concert echoing through his ears and it’s overwhelming, makes his eyes slam shut again, makes his head spin. 

Wrong answer. He’s given the wrong answer.

The sound and the room fade until all he can feel is the life seeping out of him and … oh, God, please let this be a dream.

But it’s not.

He knows it’s not.

He’s not dreaming, he’s…..


	2. Zeitgeist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written based on Words of the Day for October, on the 1_million_words comm on LJ. Chapter titles are the prompts.

_“…sorry for the short notice and I hope you’ll understand. I …just need to get away for a couple days…”_

Danny listened for a couple more seconds, then hit the key on his phone pad that started the message over from the top.

_“Hey, D, it’s Steve – I need to take a long weekend, get in some surfing, clear my head….”_

“You’re still here?” Kono’s voice didn’t register for a second, but when it did he hit ‘save’ and hung up.

“Yeah, uh, what’s up?”

“You can talk with me about it, if you’d like,” she said, smiling when Danny’s face went all ‘what are you talking about?’ “I know you’re not happy how Steve announced his vacation plans…”

“What vacation _plans_? There was no plan, there was just him leaving a message on my machine at work saying ‘hey, you’re in charge, have at it!’ Not three months into our new team effort, and he just goes away? Is that the new fashion, how the kids run things these days?”

“Steve’s not a kid,” Kono took the rant as an invite to come in and sit down for a second. “And he sure didn’t come here under normal circumstances. Right? It was pretty awful for him. So I can see how he might need a mental break, a few days of sun and water. You ought to try it yourself sometime….”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll get right on that. I’ll go grab my board and my slippers and head for the north shore…”

Danny bit out the words but Kono just kept her smile and shook her head.

“I hope I’m still working with you in a couple of years,” she said, getting back up to go for the day. “I’d love to see what you’re like once this place really gets to you.”

“Yeah, well you’re lovely the way you are, so don’t hold your breath… you’ll turn blue,” Danny said, but with a gentler tone as she waved goodnight.

He stared at the phone and pushed the receiver onto the desk, hit the button to play the message again.

_“Hey, Danny, it’s Steve…”_

There are things you just don’t do. You don’t leave your fledgling team behind on a whim, no matter how casual the era or the culture. 

_“….I need to take a long weekend….”_

You don’t bolt on people and force them realize how much they’ve gotten used to you being there.

_“…get in some surfing, clear my head….”_

You don’t fall in love with your idiotic boss and his stupid little grin and his stubborn, bullheaded ways. You don’t _ever_ let that happen, 'cause that, right there, is rookie bullshit.

_“…sorry for the short notice and I hope you’ll understand…”_

It was all wrong: This whole damn day and that message, and everything it forced on his unprepared brain, and the space between his heart and his throat that felt all heavy and tight now…worried.

_“…I …just need to get away for a couple days…”_

This was wrong. All wrong.

Danny hit play again.


	3. Antediluvian

It's still nearly pitch black here, wherever he is, but he can sense light above his head – vaguely yellow, almost behind him. He’s not sure if he _feels_ warmth from it or _wants_ to.

He’s strapped upright and tilted back. Can’t move his arms, legs, head.

His head. 

There’s something around the back of it, and he tugs, panics, then sinks in relief; it’s only on the outside; a web of metal like a cap with wires, pads, sticky spots that itch along his temple, skull, back of his neck.

Could be worse. Could be a probe.

“In five, four…” Voice Number Three intones. Steve decides to calls it voice number three because it’s definitely not either of the people he heard last time he was… awake? 

“…three…”

Voice number three _says_ ‘three’ with a soft roll on the ‘h,’ a northern or central European accent, at the same moment he realizes that _‘a’_ he is drugged and _‘b’_ the voices are coming through the same loudspeakers that shrieked out the feedback earlier.

“No!” Voice number one. _Shouting_. “This… _wo_ …w…rk… freaking…ston..ag…d…CAVEMAN … _bullsh_ …”

“Take you… _elf_ …out of …” voice number two is muttering.

“…two… one.”

Steve thinks to suck in some air and then he’s seizing, arms and legs in knots of pain, groaning as much as his knotted throat will allow as current pulses him, through the wires and then is… gone.

“Fu _uccc_ ck….whaaa….”

He wants to fight it, but then it’s washing over his brain: woozy, wavering images of a room that _can’t_ be, his dad who _can’t_ be. Mary is a tween, brooding over her pancakes. Her face is a twisted, pink parody of ‘little girl pissed’.

“Steve, where ARE you?” Voice number two barks shakily. “Say it.”

“Saturday breakfast,” Steve’s sighs. Says it for himself. Screw them. “Dad and Mary and me. I… forgot …he’d do this somtimes. When he had it in him.”

“I _told_ you….”

Voice number one isn't happy, and at first he thinks it’s _not_ happy with him until it registers.

It’s unhappy with voice number two.

“Stand by. In five, four…” 

Goddamned voice number three. Steve is _not_ gonna be friends with voice number three.

The next shock is like a bolt of lightning instead of a wave of energy. He swears he can smell it, the fission over his skin and the chemicals they’d pumped into him being churned up, activated.

“Ohhhh…. _wow_.” 

He’s seventeen, and he’s on a plane and he is terrified…. 

Steve falls back, sweating, and sucks in a sob. He will _not_ … let them know what this is like.

Whatever they’re after? 

They’re not fucking getting it.


	4. Solace

“You don’t have to stick around. I’m sure you wanna get some rest…”

Danny says it to be polite, mostly, but he can see that Kono and Chin are visibly determined to stay, for the three of them to keep each other company. He knows that they undertand that he wants the same thing, too.

Kono’s sitting on his couch and Chin is headed for the kitchen to grab them each a second beer from Danny’s fridge.

“No hurry here,” Kono kicks back, chilling. “That is… if you’re not sick of us? Ready to crash?”

Danny doesn’t even answer in words, only a sound that says _‘yeah, right. As if.’_

“I know what you mean. I’m not sure I’ll be able to close my eyes, either,” Chin says, handing the bottles around.

~*~

“It’s not a single voice mail. I would say it’s… somewhere between ten and twenty of them, edited together.”

After much agita, Danny had insisted they track down a digital audio expert and have her listen to Steve’s message.

Said expert informed them just before lunch time that the recording was not what it seemed.

“Oh,” Kono had been the only one to react out loud with a soft burst of nerves. “Oh, no.”

“See, right here,” their hired set of ears and eyes pointed to the computer program, showing where the file was originally at various levels. “The primary sound and the background have been edited, smoothed, raised and lowered to make the file all one even, nuanced whole. Some of the material came from sophisticated digital systems, like office voice mail. Some came from your home phone accounts, likely. They had to adjust each piece for tone and cadence and yet the final result is .... almost perfect."

“Anyone or any group capable of it?” Chin shook his head. "We're looking at a kidnapper with a ton of money or…”

A government? A rogue organization? Chin didn’t have to finish the sentence.

~*~ 

“He’ll be okay,” Kono says, now, fast and under her breath as Chin is sitting down in the chair across from them and popping open his beer. 

She does it so he won't hear, so Danny can pretend she’s the only one who knows, who’s seen how much skin Danny has in this game.

He smiles and gives her shoulder a push, a quick shake. 

They’d worked every angle they could think of since the news– and that’s part of why they were still here, to chip at it bit by bit, together, until something popped out and told them ‘here’s your clue.’

And for comfort. To not be alone with this very bad day. 

They were here for that, too.


	5. Solace - Part II

“Stop it. Is it asking too much for you to act like a grownup, and let someone help you take your medicine?” 

Danny pulls in the arm that Steve was trying to draw away from him, smiles as Steve chuckles low in the back of his throat and gives in, lets him.

They’re sitting forward on Steve’s couch, the bandage that had been around Steve’s arm discarded in a small plastic bag and a fresh one waiting on Danny’s knee. Danny layers some antibiotic ointment over the rash and the red lines where Steve pulled at the restraints. He skims it over the half-healed cuts and raised, angry patches that look almost like electrical burns.

His gut tightens with what he’d like to do to _them_.

“I’m fine, Danny,” Steve’s voice is insistent. Appreciative. “I’ll be fine.”

“Sure you are. ‘Cause you’re always fine. Even when you’re not. You’re fine then, too.”

He’s slowly, carefully winding the fresh gauze around Steve’s forearm, looking around vaguely for the little clip that will hold it together once he has it on. Steve hands it to him.

“There, done deal.” Danny fastens, and examines his work. Does not put Steve’s arm down. Still. Holding it. Not putting. Down.

“Hey,” Steve says – only one word, but it’s a clear invitation to look up and Danny does to the sight of Steve’s softest smile inches from his face. “Thank you. For everything.”

“You’re welcome and look…somewhere else. Please? No insult intended, but…..”

“Why? Making you uncomfortable?” Steve drops even closer in, and how are their lips not touching? They practically were before. “Would you be less… _anxious_ if I closed my eyes?”

He does, the bastard, his eyelids and lashes so pretty and smack in front of Danny’s face, his mouth millimeters away. Danny would be a damned fool not to lick and kiss it, not to pinch his teeth lightly against the bottom lip and draw out that tongue, to suck on it….

He does, and Steve’s quiet at first but very, very alert behind those closed eyes, kissing gently back at him, tasting Danny like he’s been waiting for this forever and…

Yeah, they both have been, haven’t they?

Steve scoots and urges Danny over him and Danny straddles his lap, knees butting up against the back of the couch and _fuck_ Steve is way too comfortable with this, too ready for it, hips popping up and down, urging Danny to rock with him.

They haven’t stopped kissing the whole time and Danny doesn’t even have to break it to work Steve’s shirt up, to get hands on his skin. They're both breathing hard and fast, and Steve lets go of a long ‘mmmmm’ sound when Dannys's fingers start roaming, tracing, palms pressing as somewhere a siren goes off and….

“Oh… n _ooo_ oo…”

Danny wakes to the sound of an ambulance down the street, two pillows tight in his arms and a leg slung over the bed. 

He pushes his hips against the mattress a few more times and groans softly in frustration. 

It’s only been two hours since Chin and Kono left and _wow_ , it’s going to be a long night.

It’s no solace that he knows for absolutely sure now what he wants from Steve.

There won’t be any solace until he sees him. Until he hears him say his name again.


	6. Encumbrance

“Don’t eat yours so fast! Make soup! Steve, _c’mon_ …you’re… _ruining_ it….”

Ice cream soup night. He’s ruining something Mary holds very dear, simply by digging carefully into his dessert at perfect right angles with his spoon. He’s preserving the rectangular shape of the strawberry, vanilla, chocolate layers. The goal? The last, tiny piece that is small enough to fit on his spoon will be the exact same shape it was when the original treat was placed in the bowl. With allowance for melting edges.

Mary’s philosophy is notably different. She’s happily bashing away at hers when she’s not stirring vigorously. Ice cream soup.

“Why are your parents fighting?”

Abby Leonard. Mary’s friend from school sits across from him, to Mary’s left. They’re both pretty tiny, her and his sister. First grade, maybe? Her parents do her hair in pigtails every school day, but on weekends it’s a riot of long, blonde curls and waves. Abby’s brother is in his class, is a friend of his.

He remembers having a pretty serious crush on Abby a few years after this. Her brother, too.

“They’re not. They’re…disagreeing.”

“Disagreeing that loudly is fighting,” Abby gives no ground. “Your mom goes on vacations alone. In the summers. My mom said so. Who _does_ that?”

“Only a couple of times.” He’s not sure why he’s bothering to defend his mom to a kid who is… what? Six?

“What does your mom really do, Steve?” 

He’s kept his eyes on his bowl to avoid the conversation but they fly up now. There’s a thin note of something… icy in the question.

“What do you know? It’s okay. You can tell me, I won’t tell anyone. I know you…you're confused about it. I know you're afraid sometimes.….”

“She’s a _teacher_.” Steve hears how defensive it sounds, sees Abby’s jaw set.

“Lots of parents … they had other jobs first. Before they had kids. They miss them. They get…. _bored_ ,” she says it like she knows it’s a weight on his shoulders, an encumbrance he’s lived with since he was old enough to see his family like an outsider looking in. “It’s not your fault she’s not happy.”

Steve’s throat clenches and his heart pounds because his parents are still a few yards away in the livingroom… fighting… and Mary’s still stirring her treat but _he’s_ no kid and this kitchen is _not_ here and…..

He can see his mom facing him - a room away, yeah, but she has clear line of sight as he aims his spoon at Abby’s head and flings it at her. It makes a terrible, dull ‘thunk’ sound as it hits her square on the bridge of her perfect, little nose between her soft, green eyes and then it clanks repeatedly on the table and … wow.

There is no world in which his mother would let him fling a spoon at anyone and _not_ come charging in here to make him very, very sorry he did.

Mary’s still stirring and his parents haven’t budged.

Abby picks up the spoon and reaches, sets it back in his bowl.

He’s pretty sure "Abby" is Voice Number Two when not masquerading as a first grader.

“They’ll find me,” it sounds absurd in his pre-teen voice but he keeps going. “My team will figure this out. They’ll find me and they will get me out of here and bust your sorry asses.”

Abby’s face doesn’t move a millimeter; the coolest kid in elementary school.

“Eat your damn ice cream, Steve,” she says.


	7. Innocuous

“Here are the data points we need, with all the extraneous information cleared.” 

Chin tapped the screen and hundreds of dots on the world map disappeared while dozens more stayed, glowing red and green: points of origin of the various attempts to hack into the government phone system for the state of Hawaii in the past month.

It had taken them almost a full day to pull all the strings needed to get this, but it felt like a week. Happily, it only took Chin another hour to crunch the data.

“Who hires large groups of hackers all over the world?” Kono shook her head. “Besides organized crime groups, and spy agencies?”

“My thoughts exactly,” Danny said.

Chin was honing in on the information specific to Oahu. 

“Over five hundred attempts were on the island itself in the time period…” he waved toward the single green dot. “They all look like they originate from one location – a company that handles residential and small business services. A pretty inconsequential finding, right? Not very helpful. Until you look at the IP addresses this way.”

He swiped to sort the data in descending order, and even though all they were looking at was a very, very long strong of numbers with dots interspersed one series jumped out like it was bolded and three time larger than the rest.

“One of these things does not belong here…” Danny murmured.

“Right. Every single IP address here starts with 107. See? 107 dot 14 or 107 dot six three and on and on – all homes or small businesses, maybe.”

“So the one at the top that starts with 205?” Danny asked.

He watched as Chin keyed a command into the computer.

_Traceroute www.capitol.hawaii.gov_

He hit enter, and the IP path to the state web site popped up.

_205.251.232.63_  
205.251.232.182  
205.251.232.79  
205.251.232.77  
……………..  


“Someone made it look like they were coming in via Oceanic Cable,” Chin said. “But there were here. In this building.”

“We need a full list of employees,” Danny reached for his phone. “And we’ve got to start eliminating the least likely first or we’ll be at this all month.”

“Who are you calling?” Kono asked. 

“Not anyone who might blab or be the bad guy,” he answered her unasked question, phone to his ear as he waited for the callee to answer. “Here’s a trick for you, and you can thank me later: If you ever need the super-secret phone list with every single unpublished number of employees in a given group? Call the biggest nerd you’ve got. He or she has it in a desk drawer, guaranteed. Hey, hi, Max, it’s Danny Williams…”

Chin had looked doubtful, Kono doubly so. 

But Max came through.


	8. Winsome

“Danny, hang in there, okay? This is _not_ … happening. Not real, I swear … I promise.”

Steve sees the frantic look of ‘how the fuck can you say that to me?’ in Danny’s eyes as one of the two thugs standing on either side of him reaches back further than before, punches Danny in the jaw so hard that the chair he’s tied to would tumble if the other guy didn’t catch it and steady him.

He can see a purple-red bruise blooming where Danny was struck and involuntary tears rolling from Danny’s eyes; not from emotion, but pure pain.

“This is _nothing_ , Steve,” Voice Number One says. He can’t see her; she’s standing almost directly behind him. “A game of dodge ball in the gym compared to what we’ll do to them if you don’t let go.”

Fifteen seconds ago he was having dessert with his baby sister. Now he’s in the living room of the house he grew up in, but very much the age he expects to be.

He’s watching his team suffer; Kono unconscious on the ground, hands tied behind her back; Danny strapped to a chair getting the shit pounded out of him; Chin out of eyesight to Steve’s far right – from the snapping, buzzing sounds, he can tell Chin’s being Tazered.

“I know exactly how strong you are inside and out,” VN1 tells him as the goons in front of him tip Danny’s chair backward, take turns delivering blows to his gut. “And I know where you’re weak. We will break you with this – we’ll put chains to them, shoot them, stab them over and over and make you watch. Then we’ll beat you until you pick one of them … and we’ll do it for real.”

“They know I’m missing and they… they’re _all_ on alert. No _way_ you’ll….”

“We have _you_ , don’t we?”

Steve feels himself slumping, arms cuffed behind him in one of his own kitchen chairs and there’s no fighting this any more – because if there’s even a chance they might succeed….

“I don’t know… what you want. I’d tell you… what you want but I don’t…”

“Exactly right,” Voice Number Two. Steve cranes to see him to his left, but he’s staying out of he way. “You don’t know – but it’s in there. Buried. All you have to do is not fight the scenarios, Steve. That’s all. Just go with them. Is it really so much to ask, to get out of it alive and with your team unhurt?”

“Okay,” the word comes out of him so quietly, so broken that VN2 chuckles. “I won’t fight it…”

“Thank you,” VN1 says. “As a reward, we’ll give you a moment. Some peace.”

The whole world shifts again and Steve’s so dizzy he nearly drops his beer, catches it on the arm of the Adirondack chair.

“Woah, Tippy,” Danny helps him right it, then takes a long sip from his own bottle. 

The sun’s setting and the surf is almost flat in front of them – just a light, sweet hissing of water, breeze in their hair.

“Shit, Danny, I’m sorry,” he says and Danny shrugs, tosses him a sweetly winsome smile. “I’ve been afraid of this from the start – that I’d get you mixed up in my mess.”

“How do you know that this is about your mess?” Danny asks.

“’Cause they keep dragging me room by room through my childhood? It’s about my family, right? And if it gets you hurt, or Kono or…”

“You do understand that I’m not really Danny, just a bundle of brain cells somewhere around your pre-frontal cortex?”

“Uh huh,” Steve drinks, watches the sun for a second. “I suppose.”

“So maybe stop apologizing… and just enjoy this.”

“I’ll try.”

Steve let go; preparation for more letting go to come.

“So, uh,” Danny said. “You giving any thought to the fact that they gave you a reward and I’m it?”

“The sunset… is nice, too.”

“Ass. Maybe… once this is over you need to, uh… tell me? That when your brain goes to its happy place... I'm there.”

“I know,” Steve said. “I know, I need to.”

“This doesn’t count, though.”

“Yeah. Know that, too.” 

_Five. Four. Three. Two…._

VN3, echoing somewhere in his head. 

“Oh, _shit_ , Danny…” 

Steve braces for what’s next.


	9. Apposite

“All I did was pull some data from a phone system,” their perp bit the words out, giving Danny a cocky ‘fuck you’ glare from the chair in the interrogation room where he sat with his arms cuffed behind his back. “There’s no way in hell anyone’s gonna kick the shit out of me over that. So drop the posturing? Let’s talk about a deal.”

He was a temp worker doing data entry for the county of Oahu in a cubicle on the fourth floor. Just a very average looking kid until they dug deeper and found he’d been carrying thirty grand in debt until last month… when it had all magically gone away.

“There’s no _deal_ , jackass…” Danny got back in his face. “There’s no deal because none of this is on the freaking record. No one knows we have you and no one will _ever_ know if we _do_ kick your ass or worse. To you this was about some random data, a joke, right? But immediately after you did what you did? Our friend disappeared. Our commander – someone who does more to help people in an average week than you’ll ever do in your lame- assed life.”

It was wrong to pull his arm back and slap the kid on that last word, but _fuck_ it felt good.

“Danny!” 

He looked back to see Chin making a ‘down’ motion with one hand. Kono looked less disapproving - Danny had the feeling she’d like to get a shot in, too.

“And you know what? Since they took him – there’s zero indication where he is, _no_ demand for ransom. Which means they want information,” Danny wanted to ask this puke if he had any idea what kidnappers did to those they wanted intel from, but frankly it wasn’t worth his time or Steve’s right now. “Is what they’re going at him for a matter of public security? We have no way of knowing – but it gives us, in our humble opinion, the right to kick you until you are dead unless you cooperate. So tell us. _Who_ got you into this? Start answering, and don't stop until we tell you that you are done - and maybe you'll go home tonight.”

It seemed very appropriate that the butthead who had been so ready to stand his ground ran _that_ fast once he'd spilled his guts.

He never understood what shaky ground he’d been on to begin with.

“Let it go. He doesn’t matter anymore,” Chin clapped Danny on the back as Kono led the guy out of the room. “We got everything he can give us. Let’s go turn it into something that’ll help get Steve back.”


	10. Chagrin

Steve is standing against the living room wall, peeking in toward the kitchen and listening to his mom on the phone a few feet away. He’s fuming –can feel his blood boiling, the tips of his ears turning hot and red.

He’s furious for his dad, who has been out back for over an hour now for the ‘semi-annual organizing of the tool boxes and things that pile up in the garage’.

“What part of ‘no’ isn’t clear?” he hears his mom hiss. “ _Out_ means _out_ , and … wait, no, listen, stop, stop, _stop_ it!” 

She’s trying to keep her voice down and be forceful at the same time. Then she mutters a word, meant only for herself. He’s never heard her talk that way in all his ten years. 

She’s not cheating on his dad, he’s sure of that. Not in a romantic way. But she’s lying to him about… something. And that’s cheating. Isn’t it?

He hears her hang up without a goodbye and start moving his way and before he can even think about it he’s running around to the other side of the long buffet table they used to have in the dining area, hiding in the small space between it and the far wall. 

It feels absurd hiding from his own parent, but his heart is pounding in a way that tells him it was the right thing to do. He can smell the lemon wax the buffet is polished with every week – sweet and rich and pretty amazing, considering _it’s_ not really here and _he’s_ not really here and…. 

“Son of a _bitch_ ….”

Okay, yeah. He’s heard her say that before. 

She’s rummaging around the utility closet, so angry she’s sniffing back tears. 

She runs upstairs and Steve thinks about bolting out to the garage to his dad. But he’s not sure he can keep it off his face. Not sure what he’d even tell him if he did.

Then it’s too late to move – so he watches his mom walk back into the living room, drop to a crouch and tip the head of a screwdriver into the floor where board meets board. She taps with a hammer and flips a piece out, flips it back and checks the seams carefully.

It all happens so fast and makes so little sense that it’s over and she’s back in the kitchen before he can process any of it.

And now he remembers something else: How he avoided walking on that board for months after this day, and sometimes he swore she was looking at him funny when he did it. How mom had told dad maybe the downstairs would look better carpeted and so it was, for a few years. 

And how, by the time dad decided the hardwood was nicer and tore it all up, he hadn’t had to avoid that board any more. 

Because he’d forgotten about it.


	11. Facile

“How could you _not_ have this house under twenty-four seven surveillance? What part of _major crime scene_ don’t you grasp?” 

Danny tried to stay out of the face of the HPD officer in charge at the scene, at _Steve’s damn house_ , but he could feel it’d be a losing battle if this went on much longer.

“All due respect, detective,” the officer was a veteran, not some inexperienced kid – a guy Danny normally had friendly, collegial chats with on scenes. He was visibly working to rein in his own frustration. “…but sitting officers inside an empty house all day? We don’t even know for sure Commander McGarrett was taken here! And either way… since he was kidnapped- it would seem those responsible have what they want already. We’ve been patrolling here regularly and… may I point out… we caught them in the act.”

“Danny,” Kono stepped in, a hand on Danny’s shoulder, nodding to draw him away.

He took the few seconds as they walked to breathe deep and try to calm himself. 

“Chin and I questioned all three kids thoroughly before we came back here and…”

“They cave? They tell you who they’re working for?”

“No,” Kono paused, observing Danny’s drawn face and the way his eyes were still darting, almost frantic. She waited for them to really focus on her. “Because we’re confident they’re telling the truth. They’ve got long juvvie records for exactly this kind of thing; find an empty house, cheat the security system. They make a boatload more than they do at work – it’s worth a little time in jail here and there…”

“No,” Danny was pacing before she was done. “It’s too much of a coincidence…”

“We took it from every angle,” Kono countered. “Tried playing good cop – bad cop, pointed out they could be facing prison and not jail this time. Even split them up and did the prisoner’s dilemma thing and ….they didn’t flinch.”

For a second Danny was torn between his instincts and not wanting to doubt or insult his colleagues. 

“No,” he said, finally, and Kono looked away. “I’m sorry, listen, it’s just too….easy, too pat. Seriously, do not roll your eyes, please -- every inch of me is sure they’re lying and I can’t even explain to you why but … before we call it a night you have to let me go at them.”

“Not alone…” Kono didn’t finish the sentence and Danny made a hands-up gesture of surrender.

“Fine. Of course not, come with me – I want you both there, I want your feedback.”

They rode back to the holding area together, Danny staring out the window and Chin and Kono exchanging silent glances of worry for him.

It had been nearly three full days. 

The sense this could all end well, somehow, was fading by the hour.


	12. Evanescent

“Danny…. Un _gghh_ h.. watch it you’re…. _Geez_ …driving like….”

Kono doesn’t finish the sentence, sees it registering with him what exactly she’d stopped herself from saying as he cranks the wheel hard to the left.

They’re following the long, curving road over Sand Island, headed for the warehouses by the port. HPD units and an ambulance are with them, lights off, no sirens, but all of them are flying. 

“What did you say to them?” Chin asks from the back seat, but he doesn’t get an answer.

Danny hadn’t laid a hand on the three kids. He just marched in and murmured one long, low sentence at them – too low for them to hear. They had tried so hard to catch any sense of it but couldn’t – could only see the burglars’ faces falling fast, in unison, all pretense of toughness melt off them like sugar under a blowtorch.

Chin guessed Danny hadn’t been above reminding them they had Ohana too – and what a properly motivated rogue cop might to do to certain members of said Ohana if they didn’t spill.

“If he’s not okay…” was all Danny would say.

Kono couldn’t help thinking those kids had better hope they’d folded fast enough.

~*~

“This is over. Almost,” He dips down to whisper it to his sister. “We’ll be home, soon. A few more minutes, I promise.”

Her face doesn’t move, but she squeezes his hand so hard he can feel the bones rubbing. 

They watch the funeral procession pass them on their left, see it stop at the altar and _why_ are they making him relive his mother’s funeral? What possible information could they want about an accident, two suffering children and their stunned, empty father?

“They’re coming,” he hears someone yell and he wonders who would be so freaking rude as to shout at a funeral until he realizes it’s VN2. “You’ve got _five minutes_ to get him unhooked and in that van or…”

“If I go too fast…” VN3, sounding concerned for Steve, for once, _fuck him_ very much. “…I can’t promise.”

Steve fights whatever they’ve got running through him and forces his eyes open for a half a second – the most he’s managed in a day. He’s flat out on a gurney, the room still nearly pitch dark around him and the light from the booth above shining softly down, blurring his vision. 

Someone is pulling at the device on his head, shaking it slowly off and other hands are tugging needles out of his arm, the back of his hand, his thigh. Their lackeys are doing the physical work but they’re all with him now, not upstairs hiding like cowards. 

They’re getting ready to abandon ship.

His eyes fall shut and he’s back at the funeral, head pounding and blood visible on his shirt, his hands, running down the front of his slacks…

“Nooo,” VN1 only gets the single word out, choked and scared … for _him_? Why? And then he can hear them all retreating, VN2 hustling them all away. 

They’ve barely been gone three minutes when he hears familiar voices shouting, people running in. 

Shots. Four of them.

“Please, no…” all he can think is ‘not one of my team’ but it’s the goons next to him who fall and when his eyes slide open again EMTs are grabbing him, lifting him and running for the door.

“It’s over, Steve. Just a few more minutes….we’ll be home free.”

Danny, leaning in to say it close to his ear; keeping it as private as possible with uniformed and rescue workers all around them.

“Promise you, babe - you’ll be fine.”

“They wanted to know…about my parents. My mother…”

“Doesn’t matter, okay? Save your energy for…”

“Does matter. Saying it in case….” It’s hard to talk, getting rolled and jostled in multiple sets of arms that are struggling to get him in the ambulance without hurting him more.

But then he’s there and still again, and Danny’s holding his hand, squeezing so hard he can feel the bones press into each other.

“Okay. Tell me….I’m listening, start talking, okay?” 

It’s a dozen minutes to the hospital, at least. 

He can see Danny’s had a better look at him in this light and isn’t sure he should have been handing out assurances.

“Steve? Danny’s voice, both getting louder and fading away. “C’mon, _talk_ to me. Steve!”


	13. Adamant

“It’s a losing battle,” Chin put a palm flat against his back, supportive. “He’s…I don’t even know the word for it.”

They were standing outside the hospital room, watching Steve move slowly from bed to dresser and back, a drawn frown on his face. He was dropping his few things one by one into the day bag Kono had brought by for him.

“Freaking infuriating?” Danny offered and Chin huffed a sound of agreement.

He’d been in the ER for over an hour, ICU for eight and in his own room less than forty and now Steve was going to run right over anyone who tried to keep him from going home. 

Never mind that he’d have to run over them at one point five miles an hour…

“The doc said they pumped him full of eight different psychotropics. Not to mention crap that stimulates cell growth, and memory-enhancing proteins. He had _seventy times_ the normal levels!” 

Danny shook his head, remembering how cold and dehydrated Steve’s hand had felt in his in the ambulance, the electrical burns on his arms, scalp – the singe marks along his hairline. They hadn’t even had antidotes for half the crap – just had to pump him full of fluids and more drugs to manage his blood pressure, his heart rate until it was all flushed out of him.

And despite it all, once he had gained consciousness he’d refused sleep, barely ate -- did nothing but talk with and question everyone; them, the HPD, the FBI agents sent in because it was a law officer who had been kidnapped.

He’d answered all their questions as best he could, too. But some things he’d only talk about in front of Danny.

“Maybe it only felt like they were honing in on her,” Danny had said when Steve told him how confusing it was, the focus on his childhood, his mother and not his murdered father, the apparent strong differences of opinion between Voice Number One and Voice Number Two about the interrogation. “It was quite the fucked up cocktail running through you – I’d revert to my childhood, too, I’m pretty sure...”

“You don’t understand,” Steve had been sitting up, but dropped back in bed like Danny’s doubt was too much to take. “It wasn’t _me_ going there. It was _them_ pushing me there. Over and over. If I veered away, thought about anything else without their permission….”

He hadn’t described how the shocks had felt. They didn’t need to know everything.

“Hey,” Danny had drawn Steve’s eyes back with the one word and a pause. “You will get answers, okay? I know you will, because you won’t give up until you do. But can you _please_ accept that it might take weeks or months and…. not let it chew a hole right through you in the meantime?”

“I don’t know,” Steve had barked, and then seemed to hear it in his voice, his own stubbornness. “Maybe you could help me with that. I think I’m … probably going to need some help getting out of my own head for a while.”

Danny had given off an involuntary ‘holy crap, that’s huge!’ whistle, the words were so shocking. Steve had broken into an actual grin, and something about it - hearing him say that, seeing him smile…

Danny reached, and cupped the far side of Steve’s face, thumb sweeping over his skin.

“I’d be happy to. Do anything I can for you, babe. I will.”

He had sunk in to the touch, eyes closing, and Danny’s breath hitched when Steve turned just enough to kiss the heel of Danny’s hand.

Then the freaking FBI agents had walked in. Damn feds and their freaking piss poor timing, always…. 

~*~

Now they were stepping out of the Camaro, and Steve stood leaning against the passenger side door looking at his own house like he’d been away a year and not five days.

Or maybe, Danny thought, more like he'd never really seen it before. 

“You have to get some rest,” He said as he tapped in the code, opened the door, “But do you want to take a look around, first? Maybe you can better figure out what they targeted when they broke in… see something the investigators might have missed.”

They’d combed over every square inch, but hadn’t found anything out of place except the TV set and electronics the ‘burglars’ had pretended to be after.

“I don’t need to look around. I could use a hammer and a screwdriver, though. They’re under the kitchen sink. Please?” 

Danny had shot him a look but went to get them, and came back to find Steve staring down at his own living room floor. 

“Can you help me down?” 

Steve’s arms were both bandaged and his body was stiff from all the hours prone. Danny helped him to kneeling, back on his heels, and then handed him the tools. He watched, rapt, as Steve pressed the screwdriver against one of the long sides of a particular floor board and tapped it with a hammer until it popped up.

“What the hell?” It was what came out of his mouth as Steve pull an ancient baggie out of the space under the board – yellow with age, a simple, single white zip strip at the top. 

It was empty, except for a piece of generic notepad paper that looked as fresh and new as the plastic was old. There were big, block letters handwritten on it; Danny watched Steve sink to sitting, fighting off tears as he read them, choosing to laugh instead – low and rumbling, the most humorless laugh Danny had ever heard.

“Steve, c’mon..what’s it… what’s it say?”

Steve handed him the paper and Danny flipped it around and right side up.

SHE WAS NEVER  
WHO YOU THOUGHT SHE WAS

“What the hell does that mean?” Danny said and his words seemed to tip the balance; Steve crumbled and Danny scrambled to catch him, to hold him in his arms as he shook, gasping, the last of his reserves drained.

“I’ve got ….no idea….” Steve got the words out slowly. “…and….”

And no one to ask, Danny thought. 

“Shit, babe…. Shit. It’s okay. It’ll be okay….”

Even Danny didn’t believe that. But he didn’t know what else to say.


	14. Asylum

“They didn’t have the seven grain,” Danny was walking down the yard at Saturday speed, nice and easy, a bag full of lunch and bottles of iced tea in one hand and a small table from the lanai in the other. “So I got you rye.”

Steve didn’t answer, didn’t move except to flip the pages inside the latest folder of notes; details on his case, compiled by both his own team and the feds. 

He’d had his ups and his big downs in the five days since Danny brought him home. His focus, attention span and strength had gotten back to something close to normal, his bruises and burns visibly healing when news came that they had a line on the possible identity of Voice Number Three; a crooked doctor with ties to both organized crime and international terrorists who lately had been vaguely shooting his guilty mouth off about a situation that sounded awfully familiar.

Steve had sunk back into obsession ever since - on the phone with the feds, on the computer looking for something they might have missed in their efforts to figure out where he was now. 

“Steve, c’mon, _food_ … time to eat,” he gave Steve’s chair a soft kick and watched him startle, surface, setting aside the folder and looking a guilty as he noticed the small table. The sandwiches were unpacked, tops already popped off the drinks and chips spread out on a napkin.

“Sorry,” Steve rubbed one tired eye, blinking the other. “They didn’t have seven grain?”

“Nope. So I got you the rye.” 

He’d done a lot of repeating this week.

“Thanks,” Steve finished half the sandwich in about four bites, downed half his tea and kicked back, eyes still distracted.

“Eat the rest,” Danny said, voice allowing no objection. Steve looked like he might try, anyway, but then gave in.

“You eat like a freaking bear. Or a whale, maybe. You don’t chew, you inhale,” Danny watched Steve polish off the tea as he said it, ignoring the jibe entirely.

Danny had pretty much been living here all these days. It was entirely unplanned and informal – he’d expected to drop him off, maybe have dinner that first night and go back to his place. But it turned out that though Steve was ready to leave the hospital, he wasn’t ready to be alone. So he stayed, waiting for the day Steve would tell him to go the hell home and leave him be. 

“I need to tell you something,” Steve said now, and Danny could feel his own eyes narrowing as he chewed. Maybe this was it? “And I need you to be…patient. Not freak out.”

“Yeah?” He put his drink down and gave Steve his full attention, watched him squirming in his chair. 

“There were a few times while they were holding me that they let me ‘go,’ you know? As in, they didn’t try to control my thoughts. And every time I came straight here. To you. Just like this, us talking – you in that chair and me in this one and Danny I think…you're like my shelter from the storm. I mean I ... uh….think my feelings for you are more complicated than simple friendship. Much more complicated.”

“No shit.” 

Danny waited a few beats to say it, loved on how Steve’s eyes shot to his, full of hope and a little doubt, as he absorbed it. He used the time to scoot his chair closer, turn it so they were facing.

“The second night you were gone…” Danny leaned up and said it against his face, his lips, brushing kisses over them between words. “…had this dream. Been waiting since you got home for you to be better. And when you are? So gonna make it not a dream anymore…”

“I’m…mostly better. Really, like…seventy five percent,” Steve said, and it made him huff a laugh into that sweet mouth that he would admit it to him, be so honest as to not claim he was ‘fine’ the way he might have in the past.

Danny deepened the kiss, felt his heart jump and his blood fly south when Steve made a surprised, excited sound at the slide of their tongues, at Danny taking charge of this, and he would _climb_ right into Steve’s _lap_ if he could, if it weren’t for the arms on these freaking lawn chairs and…

…and then the phone rang – the one in the kitchen yards away, that old school wall phone ring.

“Shit,” It came out of Danny’s mouth a little harsher, angrier than he’d expected.

“Ignore it,” Steve sat back and urged him up.

“Yeah?” That was a good sign – Steve staying in the present, not obsessing, he thought first, closely followed by ‘hey, what do you know, there is room to climb onto him,’ a tight fit but Danny settled over Steve’s lap as the phone rang four more times and stopped.

He felt an arm strong around his back, a hand in his hair as Steve put him where he wanted him and fuck, they were rocking against each other, kissing and panting and coming apart way too fast… there was so _not_ going to be any waiting, no damn _way_ to wait….

And then it was like every phone in the world was ringing; the one indoors, the one in Steve’s pocket, his spare cell under the folder on the ground next to him, all at t he same time and Danny swore once more, loudly, got up as Steve made a sound of surrender to the inevitable.

“Guess maybe… better get it, huh?”

“You think?”

“McGarrett,” Steve said into the phone, giving him a smile and a wink. “Yeah, this is he…”

Danny flopped into his own chair, wishing away the ache running through him, how his mouth still felt gently swollen, lips abraded from that kiss. 

“What?” He heard Steve say just as he was considering picking up the lunch dishes for distraction. He looked over to him instead, saw Steve’s stare hardening, his eyes going dark.

“Who is it?” Danny hoped for some indication, a whispered ‘Chin’ or ‘Kono’ but Steve just shook his head, raised a hand slightly like, ‘wait’.

“No, you don’t need to repeat the address,” Steve said after what felt like five minutes but was really less than one. “I've got it. I’m on my way.”

“Uh, babe, the ratio of your words to the caller’s words, there? Way the hell off. Who was it, what did they say?”

Steve was staring at the phone, so many different emotions playing over his face at the same time that Danny felt his own throat tighten in sympathy.

“That… was… um…. it was one of them.”

“Which ‘them’?” Danny asked, jumping up to follow as Steve headed for the house. He grabbed only the more important things, leaving the remnants of lunch behind. 

“The people who held me. Said… she can help me solve this. _Needs_ me to solve it.”

“Wait, one damn minute. Wherever the hell it is you just agreed to go, let’s order some help, some backup…” They were halfway through the house to the garage as Danny pulled out his own phone but Steve turned, put a hand on Danny’s wrist, keeping him from placing the call. 

“No. We’re going alone. You and me, D, and that’s it…”

“No, _no_ ,no we are _not_. Because _that_ – going to pay one of your kidnappers a little visit with no backup, without telling anybody? _That_ would be insane. And as often as I tell you you’re crazy….”

“Come with me, or let me go alone, D,” Steve headed for the driver’s side of his truck. “But please… don’t call anybody. Not yet.”

“Son of a bitch…” Danny climbed in, fuming as he buckled up. “You are gonna be the death of me.”

“Thank you, Danny,” Steve said as he backed out, and he sounded well, together – like himself. 

And calm. Way too calm, Danny thought. Considering.


	15. Bewitched

“Steve, _c’mon._ Stop staring slow, painful death at the highway for a damn minute and tell me…” Danny gave his arm a shake when he got no acknowledgement at all “…tell me why we are doing something that seems a thousand times more _bat shit crazy_ than usual?”

“Remember I said I could hear them talking? Arguing? The two, main voices that right were over my head all those days?”

Steve’s face relaxed a touch and his foot lightened microscopically on the gas pedal. Danny was glad to see he wasn’t so far gone he couldn’t dial it down a little. Still… he was a kind of wound up he’d never felt from him before, knuckles white around the wheel.

“Yeah, you said they were arguing over how to interrogate you.”

“I thought so. But I was so out of it that I …misunderstood. She said she was telling them to stop, that it was all caveman bullshit what they were doing and it wouldn’t work anyway -- that they couldn’t drill out of me what I didn’t know. Danny, she said she was being held, too, gun to her head the whole time and she only got away from them in the confusion, when they got tipped you were on the way.”

“And you believe her because?” 

“Because I have to. Because I need answers… like maybe a million more answers than I even wanted an hour ago…”

“No. Sorry, pal – that’s not nearly good enough. Not even close to nearly good enough. Do you _hear_ how illogical….”

“She said… they _made_ her take part in grilling me, that they knew I’d respond to …her authority instinctively….” Steve was muttering it now, monotone, like Danny was barely there at all, and it gave him a chill to watch that. “But she couldn’t hide it when they were gonna rip me off the machines and toss me in a van like a piece of meat; she was …. _scared_ for me. I know it. You can’t fake that, Danny.”

“Did she even give you a damned name? Anything about herself our team can cross check before we…”

“She didn’t need to.”

“Didn’t…. _need?_ Listen to me, I’m asking you to take a deep breath,” He spoke slowly, getting around in front of Steve’s face just a little “and pull the car over at the next rest stop. Count to ten, let me call for backup, and …”

“I’ll let you off, D, if you want. I’ll stop and let you off but I’m going on.”

“Jeesus, it’s like..enchantment, here. She a witch?”

Steve huffed an odd sound, shrugging.

“We’re three minutes from the turnoff, Danny. You with me or not?”

“Yeah,” his hand trailed over the gun in his holster. “Right behind you – armed. I’ll keep it pointed south, but you are not walking up to the place without someone having your back.”

 

~*~

It wasn’t so much a house they pulled up to as a fortified compound; gated, no trees or any high foliage around the mansion, nothing but cliff and ocean behind it.

Danny wasn’t the least shocked when the gate swung open right as they arrived.

“Sheesh. Loaded… or very well connected, right?”

“The later, I’d say.” Steve pulled up to the part of the drive that looped right in front of the main door.

He tossed it in park and they walked the few yards to the long sidewalk, Danny’s hand light on his gun but ready to draw. Steve looked shaky, like he could barely breathe, and _that_ out of _him_ , out of 'mister everyone in the deep end?' It was doing zero to reassure him.

Then the front door opened and Steve gasped, stumbled a half a step and it was all Danny could do to stay still, to keep his eyes on her, to keep looking for anyone _behind_ her or _around_ her or….

“Steven!” 

She was hugging herself, eyes red, shaking too, fingers twisting in the sleeves of her cardigan; even more overwhelmed than his friend. Danny realized looking at Voice Number One was like looking at a face he had seen before. Somewhere. On a shelf, in a frame. In Steve's office…. 

“If I had any idea you knew… anything… I would have caved. I’d have given them what they wanted. I swear, sweetie, I didn’t think for a second.…..”

“ _Mom_ …” Steve said, and the sorrow in that one, strangled word – the pain and relief and disbelief, even though he’d been so sure the whole way.

“Oh, holy …crap.” Danny’s hand left the vicinity of his weapon and went to his own forehead as it finally added up.

It was the same moment Steve came unstuck from where he was standing and went to her, arms enfolding her so hard he half lifted her off the ground.

“Mom… _ma_.... what the _hell_?”

 

~fin~


End file.
